365 Project - Week Thirteen

I have to say that week thirteen was not my lucky week when it came to my pictures.  I was really busy and then I wasn't feeling well so I had to compromise and take a picture of something....anything!  I think some of them turned out okay so I'm still happy with the week overall.  :-)

Here's week thirteen!


Day 85

I went to my hair appointment Saturday morning at Total Look in Austin and I went outside to take pictures of the pretty yellow flowers on the cactus.  But then I saw this amazing bird!  I think it was someone's pet but it got lost somehow.  It has a little tag on its ankle.  The business owners in the shopping center have been taking care of it.  This bird was not afraid of me at all.  In fact, it was walking towards me in some of the other pictures I took.  This one was my favorite!

Day 86

My mom and I went to this cute little knitting shop in Buda on Sunday.  It's called The Yellow Sweater.  We will be going back for sure!

Day 87

We had a short storm on Monday right before I got off work.  I got lucky that it stopped raining before 4:30 because I had to walk up the hill to my car and I didn't want to walk the whole way in the rain.  I saw the edge of the storm when I was walking to my car so I took a picture.  Pretty cool!

Day 88

I took pictures of one of my craft projects by these cute little clovers.  I thought they looked kind of cute in the pictures so I went back to take pictures of the clovers by themselves today!

Day 89

This is one of the many pictures I took of the rain.  We have been getting all of these little rain storms lately so I wanted to try to come up with some more fun ways to get pictures of it.

Day 90

I left work early Thursday because I wasn't feeling well.  This sign catches my eye every time I drive by it when I'm going home from work.  So, today I stopped and took a picture!  :-)

Day 91

I didn't really know what to take a picture of today so I took a picture of the water tower in Buda.  I think it came out okay.  I love the big, blue sky in the background.

That's it for week thirteen. Let's hope week fourteen is a little more lucky.  ;-)

Tiny "Art" - I'll Cover You

I finished another Tiny "Art" card!  It's made out of  felt and craft thread.  I cut this one down to ACEO size.  It was tiny!!!  I had a different vision of this picture in my head, but when I went to make it the plan wasn't working out too great so I improvised.  I originally wanted to put a smiley face on the umbrella but all the faces I tried looked weird.  I'm thinking I may have needed a darker thread for the rain drops and blanket stitch, too.  Oh well.  I think it turned out okay overall.

This one is called I'll Cover You.  I had the song from Rent in my head the other day and decided I should make an art card for it.  This is what I came up with.  :-)

I started out by cutting my precut ACEO card down so that it was 1/4" smaller so I would have 1/8" on all four sides to sew my blanket stitch.  I drew and cut my umbrella pieces and sewed them on with regular thread.  The rain drops are just a tiny L-stitch.  They didn't come out quite like I hoped but I think you get the idea that they are rain drops.  Then I just sewed the card together with a blanket stitch.  I am slowly making progress on the blanket stitch.  I still have a little trouble making the stitches even and corners are a little hard for me.  Practice makes perfect...so I'll just keep practicing!

I love Rent so much!!  I just had to post the reprise of this song...well, that and Jesse L. Martin is AMAZING!!!  The quality of the video is pretty terrible but it is so worth it!  Try not to cry.  ;-)

Hipstamatic - Beautiful Buda

It's that time again.  I have been taking lots of pictures with the Hipstamatic app on my phone so I think it's time to share some with you again. 

I downloaded the update on the app and I've been having some problems with it ever since.  It runs really slow and I can't look at the prints from the app.  I have to close out and go into my picture library to see them.  Has anyone else had this problem?  I'm hoping there will be another update that fixes the little bugs soon.  It's really a pain to have to go out of the app to see if I like the setting I used and then go back in to take more pictures!

I can't seem to find the setting I liked either.  That's just because I usually shake it to get a random setting and never really know what settings I'm using.  :-)  Some of the pictures came out okay.  Some, not so much.  It's still fun to play.  I'll just share a few of my favorites. 

I took these pictures while I was out getting a picture for my 365 Project a couple of weeks ago.  This is on some land in Buda.  Don't worry.  I didn't sneak onto the land or anything.  All of my pictures were taken from outside the fence.  I will gladly make a fool out of myself to get a good picture, but I will not get arrested!  ;-)

Okay, that's it for this edition of my Hipstamatic obsession.  I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  I'll be back soon with more.

Have a great day!

Craft Academy - Shell Picture Frame

Lesson six in Craft Academy was a shell picture frame.  I really enjoyed this project.  It was fun to make a mess with the sand and it was really relaxing to sit there and play with gluing shells.  :-)

I had a little trouble finding the supplies I wanted but I made it work.  I got white shells.  They have a little bit of pink and yellow in them,too.  I thought they were very pretty.  I couldn't find a frame that was the same width on all four sides so I decided to put a little starfish on the larger side.  I liked adding a little personal touch to my project. 

Here's my finished frame!

Now I need to go to the beach so I will have a picture to put in the frame!  ;-)

I still have a lot of white shells and star fish left.  I want to try to come up with some other fun projects to make with them.  I could make some other fun summery crafts.

Any suggestions?

I Heart Stop Motion - Deadline

Those of you who read my blog know that I love stop motion.  I think it is so amazing!!  I really do want to learn how to make my own stop motion...soon!

I have used a few stop motion videos in blog posts that fit with the theme of the post, but sometimes a video I love just doesn't fit into anything I post on my blog.  So...I decided that I would create a series of posts and call it "I Heart Stop Motion" and post those videos there.  This isn't going to have a set day of the week or anything.  I'm going to treat it like I treat my Happiness posts.  I'll just post them every once in a while when I have something to share.  :-)

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Deadline

Directed by Bang-yao Liu
Music by Röyksopp (http://royksopp.com/)
Sound design by Ian Vargo, Shaun Burdick
Actor: Chun-yao Huang

I know a lot of you have probably already seen this one.  It's been all over the place on the internet for a while.  This is such a great video.  I can't even believe how many post-its they used!  I love how the actor interacts with the pictures on the wall.  Amazing!!  Who knew something as simple as a post-it note could become such a great work of art?  Such a creative idea!

The reason I picked this video as my first is because I found a video today about the making of this stop motion.  I thought it was so interesting to see how they planned the entire thing.  Then to watch them put it into motion was so cool!  I hope you like it as much as I did.  :-)

Okay, that's all for now.  I hope you are having a wonderful Monday.  Now, get back to work!!!  I wouldn't want you to miss any deadlines!  ;-)

Craft Academy - Painted Rocks

Our fifth Craft Academy project was painted rocks.  It's a fun and simple little project.  The hardest part (believe it or not) was finding big rocks to paint!  Who knew they would be so hard to find???   I really don't have any big rocks around my house and I couldn't find any to buy unless I bought a huge bag so I gave in and bought some small rocks at the craft store.

It was very difficult to cut such a tiny pattern out of tape so my first attempt didn't go so well.  I think I was using too much paint so it went through the tape.

I had already painted a rock white when I was doing my first set of rocks, but since the stencils weren't working I decided to just make a little circle with my paint brush and make a flower.  It's not very good but I just wanted to put something on the rock so it didn't get wasted.  This was a five second painting.  ;-)

Don't worry.  I did a little better on the second attempt.  :-)  I ended up cutting the patterns out of cardstock and using a sponge brush instead of a regular brush. That seemed to work a little bit better on the smaller rocks. I will have to try the tape stencils again later if I have larger rocks.

I did find one really big rock at the last minute that was the perfect shape for a longhorn stencil.  So, I cut a stencil out of carstock and painted it.  I think it turned out pretty good.

I think this would be a good project for decorations in a flower bed or in the yard.  That's where my rocks will live.  :-)

Puppy Love

When I was making Seymour I went to my mom's house to get a little help with part of it and her dog Bo seemed excited to see Seymour.  I think he thought it was going to be for him.  Nope.  I don't really want to share Seymour.  He's my buddy! 

I thought it might be fun to try to make Bo a little plushie of his own. At first I was going to try some sort of cute shape but in the end I just went with a simple little oval with his name embroidered on it.  I decided against anything too elaborate because any applique would have been chewed off in about five minutes and the chances this toy was going to survive Bo's playing for more than a few days were slim to none.  Maybe if I make another one I'll try a fancier shape like a bone or something other cute doggy shape.

Here is the toy before I gave it to Bo.  Nothing fancy.  I just cut some scrap fabric into two ovals and sewed them together.  His name is sewn in black craft thread.  Easy peasy!

Here is Bo playing with his new personalized toy!  Isn't he cute??

(Sorry the picture quality is so bad.  My camera didn't like the lighting in the room and I don't know how to take action pictures with my little camera.)

He's so cute!

Action shot!

Yep!  He is on the coffee table!  :-)

"You're just too good to be true!  Can't take my eyes off of you!"

"Why is Buffy smelling my toy?  Why is Buffy smelling my toy???"

Exhausted!

I made a couple of short playing videos, too!

 I think he likes it!  :-)

New Toy from Marci Peterson on Vimeo.

Bo usually likes to throw his toys up in the air.  It's really cute.  He wasn't doing it today so I tried to get him to do it by throwing the toy up so he would catch it.  He caught it.  It was cute.  He still didn't throw it.  Oh well.  :-)

Jump! from Marci Peterson on Vimeo.

I think he likes it!  YAY!!!

365 Project - Week Twelve

This week was a pretty cool picture week for me.  I took a few days off work so I had time to take a lot of pictures and be picky.  On Saturday my mom and I went on our little picture adventure so I had a lot of pretties to choose from that day.  Most of the days I just happened to be in the right place at the right time!  I love it when that happens!

Here's week twelve!

Day 78

My mom and I went for a picture taking walk at Stagecoach Park in Buda Saturday morning.  It's really pretty there.  There is so much there that we weren't able to walk the whole park.  We'll have to go back again...probably a few times.  I couldn't decide which picture to use so I let my mom pick Day 78.  For some reason the butterflies have been very cooperative for me lately.

Day 79

On Sunday we had baptisms after church at The Well!  Two people were baptized!!  After church we ate lunch and met up over at Barton Springs for the big event.  I took a few pictures and none of them were great.  This was the best one so I decided it would work because I think it shows you how pretty it is out there!  :-)

Day 80

I got my cardinal!  YAY!!!  I was off work on Monday so I went outside to see what I could find and this cardinal was on the fence outside.  I was too slow!  There was a brown cardinal, too, and I caught a picture of it on the fence.  I gave up and went inside but decided to go outside and try one more time to get the red one.  I was so happy I went back out.  Both birds were up in this tree.  I got some individual pictures and some with both together!  They're aren't the best pictures because they were up in a tree and kind of far, but I was so happy to get to take them.  :-)

Day 81

We went to Girlie Night at Alamo Drafthouse again on Tuesday.  They showed 10 Things I Hate About You! This is one of my favorite movies.  I still remembered every line!  :-)  I got my night picture of the Ritz sign, too!  Makes me happy!

Day 82

I saw two birds hanging out in the letters of the Barnes & Noble Sign.  They had a nest inside the "R".  I think this is the mommy (I made that up. I just decided this was the mommy and the other bird watching from the roof was the daddy).  :-)  They were watching me the whole time I took pictures.  They would jump from letter to letter and then fly away.  Then they'd come back and do it all over again.  It was pretty cute.  I decided I should probably leave them alone and let them take care of their babies after a couple of minutes...plus, people probably thought I was nuts taking pictures of the Barnes & Noble sign!!

Day 83

What I learned on Thursday: Sometimes pictures of animals just don't work!  I tried to take some pictures of Bo.  He was so not in the mood. I tried to trick him with a little fetch.  Nope.  He's apparently smarter than me!!  He still looks cute!  Don't you love the "lawn"??  ;-) 

Day 84

I got stopped by a train on my way home today.  Luckily I was in front of the line so I could take some pictures.  I took them through my windshield so they're not great but it was still fun.  :-)

Bonus Pictures

I had a few extra pictures from this week that I wanted to share, too.

Some more pretty birds

An amazing sunset

And a little cuteness!

Week Eleven - The Rest of The Story

I have a few extra pictures from week eleven of my 365 Project that I kind of wanted to share.  Nothing big.  ;-)  I hope you like them!

These are some of the extra pictures that I took on Saturday.

I took a lot of pictures of this butterfly.  I was on a mission to get one of it flying. I got a bunch!

I was trying to get a picture of this bird when I was walking to my car but it kept turning around.  Then it just flew away.  I guess it didn't want to have its picture taken.

This was my second attempt at getting a sunrise picture on Friday.  The sun was a little too high at that point.

That's all for now.  I have gotten some pretty good pictures so far this week so I am very excited to share them with you on Friday.

Have a great day!